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Eagles In Drag

I've covered The Maine for years interviewing the guys through a three album cycle and they have their four last shows of the year coming up in these few weeks but something a little different popped up earlier this year. Two of the guys, John O'Callaghan and Jared Monaco joined forces with past touring mates in Eric Halvorsen (ex-Rocket To The Moon), Ryan Gose (This Century, Stop Dead) and Trey Nickelsen. That project is called Eagles In Drag. Their debut EP came out in March and for now, we're unsure if we can expect more from the band music wise, show wise but we knew that we wanted to talk to the band.

We caught some time with John to talk about how the band formed, the writing process. Even how they went about this project considering everyone's past musical history. Read on for the interview!

Eagles in Drag debuted today. How did the idea come about to do the project?The idea was born from my yearning to take a jaunt out of my comfort zone as far as songwriting is concerned. I really wanted to approach writing a song with a completely new set of eyes and utterly unaffected by a preconceived notion of how things must sound.

You commented on how The Maine is your baby and this band is like a girl you took out on a few dates. Will the band play shows now that this EP is out? Just stick to recording?

At this point in time it seems as though recording will be the extent of what we'll do with this project. I (with The Maine) have quite the schedule coming up with a UK tour, South America, then all summer on the Warped Tour so playing shows with other guys who tour as well seems a bit difficult to manage right now. Who knows though, possibly in the future when everyone isn't busy we can play a few shows.

For this band, you have members coming from past successful touring acts like your own history. How did that affect the songwriting process?The fact that we all respected one another as musicians I think really shaped the collective effort that was the songwriting process. We all fed off of each other's energy and kept an open mind and just wanted to have a lot of fun experimenting in musical worlds we were unfamiliar with.

How did you go about the recording for this album? In one set few days? Sparingly through out a few months?I had a handful of ideas prior to meeting with the other guys to write so that we weren't flying blind. We ended up writing the five songs in about a two weeks and recorded them in about four days. We then sat on the recordings for about a year until there weren't really any conflicting projects happening with our respective groups.

Can fans expect more in the next few months from Eagles In Drag?Fans can only expect what has been released and the idea that this is completely a side project. I suppose it will completely depend on the response we get from people who hear the EP if we play shows, make more tunes, etc. I'm really just happy I got to spread my wings a bit and work with some really great cats in a creative atmosphere!